The legislative authority having been thus invoked, and invoked in vain, it was resolved to stretch farther the long arm of executive power, and by that arm to reach and strike the victim.  It so happened that I was in this city in May, 1833, and here learned, from a very authentic source, that the deposits would be removed by the President’s order; and in June, as afterwards appeared, that order was given.

Now it is obvious, Gentlemen, that thus far the changes in our financial and fiscal system were effected, not by Congress, but by the executive; not by law, but by the will and the power of the President.  Congress would have continued the charter of the bank; but the President negatived the bill.  Congress was of opinion that the deposits ought not to be removed; but the President removed them.  Nor was this all.  The public moneys being withdrawn from the custody which the law had provided, by executive power alone, that same power selected the places for their future keeping.  Particular banks, existing under State charters, were chosen.  With these especial and particular arrangements were made, and the public moneys were deposited in their vaults.  Henceforward these selected banks were to operate on the revenue and credit of the government; and thus the original scheme, promulgated in the annual message of December, 1829, was substantially carried into effect.  Here were banks chosen by the treasury; all the arrangements with them made by the treasury; a set of duties to be performed by them to the treasury prescribed; and these banks were to hold the whole proceeds of the public revenue.  In all this, Congress had neither part nor lot.  No law had caused the removal of the deposits; no law had authorized the selection of deposit State banks; no law had prescribed the terms on which the revenues should be placed in such banks.  From the beginning of the chapter to the end, it was all executive edict.  And now, Gentlemen, I ask if it be not most remarkable, that, in a country professing to be under a government of laws, such great and important changes in one of its most essential and vital interests should be brought about without any change of law, without any enactment of the legislature whatever?  Is such a power trusted to the executive of any government in which the executive is separated, by clear and well-defined lines, from the legislative department?  The currency of the country stands on the same general ground as the commerce of the country.  Both are intimately connected, and both are subjects of legal, not of executive, regulation.

It is worthy of notice, that the writers of the Federalist, in discussing the powers which the Constitution conferred on the President, made it matter of commendation, that it withdraws this subject altogether from his grasp.  “He can prescribe no rules,” say they, “concerning the commerce or currency of the country.”  And so we have been all taught to think, under all former administrations.  But we have now seen that the President, and the President alone, does prescribe the rule concerning the currency.  He makes it, and he alters it.  He makes one rule for one branch of the revenue, and another rule for another.  He makes one rule for the citizen of one State, and another for the citizen of another State.  This, it is certain, is one part of the treasury order of July last.